How to Use Chip Resetters

First of all, you do not need to use a chip resetter when you first install our inks and cartridges. The chips on all of our cartridges read full when you receive them even though they are not yet filled. (That should indicate to you that the chip is not actually associated with the contents of the cartridge.)

To use our resetter, make certain you only reset a chip after you have refilled the cartridge fully. You line up the pins on the resetter with the contacts on the chip and press the resetter into the chip. This will collapse the pins and allow them to make contact with the circuit inside the resetter and it will reprogram the chip to read 100% full. When the resetter makes contact with the circuit a red light will be lit on top of the resetter. Keep the contact steady until the red light turns green. That’s the signal that the chip has been reset to 100% full. Make sure that you remembered to refill the cartridge with ink.

The lining up of the resetter can often be a bit tricky and if the resetter detects that it may short the chip it triggers its own safety routine and shorts itself instead. At that point it will not activate even the red light. It's not defective nor ruined. But, the only way to wake it back up is to remove the screws on the resetter to open it up and remove the batteries for 20 seconds. The circuit will reactivate when you reinstall the batteries. You only need to do this when the resetter will not light up red and appears “dead”.

So can you short a chip? Sure you can even just by handling it. But generally a resetter can reset a chip from 5 – 10 times before the chip needs replacement. We sell replacement chips for most of the expensive cartridges we sell.

The EPSON 3800/3880 waste tank chip resetters are a bit different. They require you to have two maintenance tanks. Using the chip resetter requires resetting one chip to borrow some of its code to reset the chip on the 2nd maintenance tank and visa versa.

Some of our cartridges have built-in resetters or auto-reset, and you can read each of the product descriptions to know if yours do. But some of these can also be reset manually.

Why would you want to manually reset a cartridge if it resets automatically?

The 1400/1430 and 2880 are prime examples. These carts have auto-reset chips that will reset ONLY when they first read empty. When they read empty, you remove them from the printer and replace them back into the printer to reset the chip (remember to refill them with ink!) But, often when one cartridge runs out, the others are close to empty. If you refill the others, the chips will not reset. So if you want to refill the others before they are empty you can manually reset the chips!